July 26, 1894] 



NATURE 



30 1 



efforts after puerility of style. One was in a popular 

 work on geology, where the beautiful problems of the 

 past of our island and the evolution of life were defaced 

 by the disorderly offspring of a quite megatherial wit — 

 if one may coin such an antithesis to " etherial." One 

 jest I am afraid I shall never forget. It was a Laocoon 

 struggle with the thought that the huge subsidiary brains 

 in the lumbar region of Stegosaurus suggested the 

 animation of Dr. Busby's arm by the suspicion of a 

 similarly situated brain in the common boy. The second 

 <lisappointment was a popular lecture professing to deal 

 with the Lick Observatory, and I was naturally anxious 

 to learn a little of the unique appliances and special dis- 

 coveries of this place. Cut we scarcely got to the 

 Observatory at all. We were shown — I presume as being 

 tnoreadapted to ourintelli ^ence — numerous lantern-slides 

 of the road to the Lick Observatory, most of them with 

 the "great white dome " in the distance, other views (for 

 comparison probably) with the "great white dome" 

 hidden, portraits of the " gentlemen of the party on 

 horseback," walks round the Observatory, the head of an 

 interesting old man who lived in a cottage near, the dome 

 'by moonlight, the dome in winter, and at last the tele- 

 scope was " too technical '' for explanation, and we were 

 told in a superior tone of foolish things our fellow 

 common people had said about it. For my own part, I 

 really saw nothing very foolish in a lady expecting to see 

 houses on the moon. My third experience was osten- 

 sibly a lecture on astronomy, but it was really an enter- 

 tainment — and a very fair one — after the lines of Mr. 

 Grossmith's. "Corney Grain in Infinite Space "might 

 have served as a title. It was very amusing, it was full 

 of humour, but as for science, the facts were mere 

 magazine clic/u's that we have grown sick of long ago. 

 And as a pretty example of its scientific value I find a 

 newspaper reporter, whose account is chiefly "(laughter) ' 

 with jokes in between, carried away the impression that 

 Herschel discovered Saturn in the reign of George the 

 Third. 



Now this kind of thing is not popularising science 

 at all. It is merely makmg fun of it. It dishonours 

 the goddess we serve. It is a far more difficult thing 

 than is usually imagined, but it is an imperative one, 

 that scientific exponents who wish to be taken seriously 

 should not only be precise and explicit, but also 

 absolutely serious in their style. If it were not a point 

 of discretion it would still be a point of honour. 



In another direction those to whom the exposition of 

 science falls might reasonably consider their going more 

 carefully, and that is in the way of construction. Very 

 few books and scientific papers appear to be constructed 

 at all. The author simply wanders about his subject. 

 He selects, let us say, " Badgers and Bats "as the title. It 

 is alliterative, and an unhappy public is supposed to 

 be singularly amenable to alliteration. He writes first of 

 all about Badger A. '■ We now come," he says, " to 

 Badger B " ; then " another interesti.".g species is Badger 

 C " ; paragraphs on Badger D follow, and so the pave- 

 ment is completed. " Let us now turn to the Bats," he 

 says. It would not matter a bit if you cut any section of 

 his book or paper out, or shuffled the sections, or destroyed 

 most or all of them. This is not simply bad art ; it is 

 the trick of boredom. .\ scientific paper for popular 

 reading may and should have an orderly progression 

 and development. Intelligent common people come to 

 scientific books neither for humour, subtlety of style, nor 

 for vulgar wonders of the "millions and millions and 

 millions" type, but for problems to exercise their minds 

 upon. The taste for good inductive reading is very widely 

 diffused ; there is a keen pleasure in seeing a previously 

 unexpected generalisation skilfully developed. The 

 interest should begin at its opening words, and should 

 rise steadily to its conclusion. The fundamental prin- 

 ciples of construction that underlie such stories as Poe's 



NO. I 291, VOL 50] 



" Murders in the Rue Morgue," or Conan Doyle's " Sher- 

 lock Holmes" series, are precisely those that should guide 

 a scientific writer. These stories show that the public 

 delights in the ingenious unravelling of evidence, and 

 Conan Doyle need never stoop to jesting. First the 

 problem, then the gradual piecing together of the solu- 

 tion. They cannot get enough of such matter. 



The nature of the problems, too, is worthy of a little 

 attention. Very few scientific specialists differentiate 

 clearly between philosophical and technical interest. To 

 those engaged in research the means become at last 

 almost as important, and even more important than the 

 end, but apart from industrial applications, the final end 

 of all science is to formulate the relationship of pheno- 

 mena to the thinking man. The systematic reference 

 of Calceola, for instance, Theca, the Lichens, the Polyzoa, 

 or the Termites, is an extremely fascinating question to 

 the student who has just passed the elementary stage, and 

 so too is the discussion of the manufacture and powers 

 of telescopes and microscopes ; morphological questions 

 again become at last as delightful as good chess, and so 

 do mathematical problems. But it must be remembered 

 that morphology, mathematics, and classification are from 

 the wider point of view mere intellectual appliances, and 

 that to the general reader they are only interesting in 

 connection with their end. To the specialist even they 

 would not be interesting if he had not first had their end 

 in view. The fundamental interest of all biological 

 science is the balance and interplay of life, yet for one 

 paper of this type that comes to hand there are a dozen 

 amplified cataloguesof the "Cats and Crocodiles" descrip- 

 tion. I find again, presented as a popular article, a long 

 list of double stars, with their chief measurements. Now, 

 to a common man one double star is as good as a feast. 

 Again, the botanist, asked to write about leaves, will 

 get himself voluminously entangled in the discussion 

 whether an anther is a lamina, or in an exhaustive and 

 even exuberant classification of simple and compound, 

 pinnate and palmate, and the like, making great points 

 of the orange leaf and the barberry. But the kind of 

 thing we want to have pointed out to us is -^'hy 

 leaves are of such different shapes and so variously 

 arranged. It is a thing all people who are not botanists 

 puzzle over, and a very pretty illustrated paper might be 

 written, and remains still to be written, hnking rainfall 

 and other meteorological phenomena, the influence of 

 soil upon root distribution and animal enemies, with 

 this infinite variety of beautiful forms. 



Enough has been said to show along what lines the 

 genuine populariserof science goes. Thereare models still 

 in plenty ; but if there are models there are awful examples 

 — if anythingthey seem to be increasing — whoappearbent 

 upon killing the interest that the generation of writers who 

 are now passing the zenith of their fame created, wounding 

 it with clumsy jests, paining it with patronage, and 

 suffocating it under their voluminous and amorphous 

 emissions. There is, I believe, no critical literature 

 dealing generally with the literary merits of popular 

 scientific books, and there are no canons for such 

 criticism. It is, I am convinced, a matter that is worthy 

 of more attention from scientific men, if only on the 

 grounds mentioned in my opening paragraphs. 



H. G. Wells. 



0,V THE NEW BUILDINGS FOR THE ST. 

 ANDREWS {CATTY) MARINE LABORATORY. 



TH.-\T St. Andrews had not one of the oldest marine 

 laboratories was the result of an accident. Never- 

 theless it has the oldest marine laboratory in Britain, 

 since it was opened early in 18S4., though since 18S2 the 

 practical laboratory in the College had been used for this 

 purpose ; and it could not well be otherwise, since it was 



